Tell the Long Road
by IVIaedhros
Summary: There were many who had been stronger, smarter, faster, but he'd outlived them all, even if he didn't always want to. Life, death and all the pointless lessons in between. Ukitake Jyuushiro--Sublimation: all that he might've given others, he gave to her.
1. Impatience

"Tatsuta's bloody ass, what's taking her so long?!" I start slightly at this, looking up from where I sit in a comfortable lotus to a very frazzled Kiyone. Then I twitch slightly as I get the reference. Somehow she combines the worst of Shunsui and her sister.

Disturbing.

Kiyone begins pacing circles around me, wringing her hands in anguish. I close my eyes again, head bowed in meditative posture.

It wouldn't do to be openly amused while a beloved subordinate frantically worries about the life of her sister.

I fight to keep the smirk off my face and succeed.

Mostly.

"Your sister is an extremely competent healer and a capable fighter in her own right. Captain Unohana would not trust her otherwise," I say this, knowing it is fact, and hoping to reassure her. It seems to work.

For fifteen seconds.

"...she should've sent a butterfly by now, why hasn't she sent a butterfly?" Kiyone mumbles, completing her twenty-third (I think) lap around me.

I remain as I have been: relaxed, composed, head bowed in prayer, fully taking advantage of the public's well-meaning, if ignorant typecasting of me as the serene counselor. Kiyone, more so than most subordinates, often mirrors and amplifies my own moods so I sit here in calm and will her to follow my example.

There's more wringing of hands, vocalized loudly by her trademark gloves, and the twenty-fifth lap comes and goes before the petite young woman abruptly turns on me again.

"Do you think...?" The question is spoken in a plaintively anxious tone-that of a child, before bleeding away to silence.

Her bright, sparking reiatsu begins to dim and cool. There is yet more wringing of the hands before my uneasy aide finally abandons her worn circuit for a seat adjacent to myself, which she reaches by abruptly falling back against the wall and allowing herself to gradually side down the wooden panels. A deep breath, then she's twiddling her thumbs, reiatsu still bright and sparking, but slowly less so.

With my head still bowed and face safely covered by my hair, I allow myself that pleased smile without guilt, knowing this time it for her and not at her that I do so.

A sigh.

"You could teach us all a lot about patience, Captain," Kiyone murmurs.

I chuckle, thinking of Isane's return and the fact that I'm actually due to be given a rather rigorous examination by the same woman tomorrow.

"No, I don't think so," I utter, hidden smile still on my lips and I know I have her attention, "Patience implies having something that you're looking forward to."

I am confused when the dimming spark next to me crackles bright, flashing yellow again before pulsing out into a remorseful red. Soft steps and I feel a tiny hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes at last and find myself looking into Kiyone's own anxious gaze, surprised at her unprecedented daring.

"S-someday we...you should talk about that: about not believing in something to look forward to."

I am robbed of all breath.

"...you misunderstand."

Kiyone's face goes aflame and she immediately falls to the floor in a bow so low and fast that her head hits the floor.

"FORGIVE ME CAPTAIN!!!" A blur of shunpo and she is gone before I can stop her.

The hand that I had unconsciously reached out falls back down to my side.

I am alone now, the only one waiting on Isane.

I swallow, tasting the familiar copper tang and return to my meditation, but the peace I had once had does not return to me.

* * *

_Inspired by spaceisawaste's _The Things Raven Sees_, chapter 36._


	2. Lead

Jyuushiro was not born a leader. He was the eldest, the Firstborne and favored son, his every need attended before he thought of it.

The Disease comes and it teaches him.

From its scourging, he learns patience, humility and wisdom, but it does not account for everything.

Who taught him to plan, to detail, to train and build those under him?

What prompted him to trust his subordinates so much that he allows them to fail and blemish his own honor?

Where did he learn to lead by example, to take the hardest task for himself, but to always conserve his meager strength?

When did it occur to him that success was achieving redundancy for his own life?

Why would dozens of the most powerful beings on any side of the spirit realm follow a man who, in the space of the moment, is weaker than their weakest?

"Like a father..."

They say, in respect and reverence,

"Worse than my own mother..."

They say, in affection and amazement.

And there is the key for you.

Years ago, the life of a wonderful, loving couple was cut short, leaving eight confused, grieving children to deal with a world. And as the parents were laid to rest in their death beds, their eldest pushed himself out of the sterile infirmary that was also his room. He gathered his brothers and sisters in his bony hands and made himself a promise.

_I will be your father. _

_I will be your mother._

_I will carry the load until I break and then you will lift me up so I can go again.__  
_


	3. Blasphemy

"Sir."

"…."

"Sir." Dull brown eyes lost to a distant place snap back to the present.

"Sir, it…it's time for you-"

"Yes..."

Time does not stop or stretch, but both wish it would. The silence stands impatiently for a moment.

A moment.

Then one looks away and the other bows his head briefly, in benediction, his spine straightening, strengthening.

It will be done.

"Yes, thank you for reminding me. Please, watch the men while I am gone."

"Of course, sir."

There is the soft rustle of fabric and as the twin shouji doors slide open, the frail pillar of pallid white steps out into the riot of spring's color and is consumed by it.

And soon, all too soon, the desolate, dutiful, _respectful_ silence of warriors' province turns into a brash din of life-joyful, irreverent, _unknowing and uncaring_ life.

The pale man swiftly passes by the courts of the nobles and their bustling estates, past the towered manse of the privileged, out the great gates, his passage is marked by no more than a whisper.

Further still he goes, past the boisterous carousal of the market place, past the hagglers and the springtide festival's reveling drunkards, sparing not a glance for merchant or their wares.

The crippled and beggar child do not hinder him.

Maybe they know. Spirits, a blessing upon them.

At last he arrives.

It is a wonderful, radiantly beautiful day where it seems that every object in nature must magnify life in glorious praise of its own self, every man and beast a voice raised in a grand shout:

"_HERE I AM!"_

As the pale man's immortal flight ceases and he begins the final walk, he thinks it all a callow blasphemy.

Despite the generally twisting streets, he can see his destination from a great distance. The home is small and rude, a hovel of shoddy architecture and lazy craftsmanship. There's trash in the yard and two chickens, cock and hen, under the elevated floorboards.

But the trash has been gathered into an orderly pile and there is a small garden, struggling for life behind a knee high fence as a young, beautifully ugly woman lovingly tends to it, back bent in diligence and nonsensical song on her lips. This is a home with many, many memories, he decides as he steps past the rows of neighboring houses.

So much with so little and now he must come to take away even that.

The streets are clear and he is getting too close. He allows his sandals to scuff as he stops at the entrance to the garden.

The woman turns from her examination of the precious radish and her eyes widen briefly with astonishment at the beautiful figure that has leapt from old tales of paradise and now stands unmoving at the border of her meager garden. But the worshipful awe dies as soon it was birthed.

She knows.

Somehow, they always know.

"No…"

Her face, once so storied and colorful, drains of blood completely so that she is now colorless as he. It's like the soul has fled the body. Maybe a small part of it has. Maybe it was already gone and its loss just now realized.

"No…no…NO!"

A gnarled and sunburnt hand cups chapped lips and the hoe falls to ground, forgotten. She waves her other hand about frantically as if she could somehow beat away his image. When he does not disappear, she turns and flees back into her home.

She does not bother to close the door.

He opens the gate and passes through the garden, careful of the vegetables and stops at the doorway, listening to her wounded sobs. Briefly, he knocks on the doorpost, willing himself to put all the useless kindness and dignity that he possesses into his voice. There is no answer. He did not expect any.

After many minutes, he lowers himself on to the grass and allows his back to rest against the uneven wood of the house's side.

The hours pass.

The sun begins to set.

Then, alerted by some signal known only to him, the pallid man in white stands up and walks through the door, being sure to shut it on his way in.

They always let him in eventually.


	4. Cost

"Why the long face, cap'n?"

Aizen Sousuke did not bother to visually acknowledge his fellow traitor from his seat as he gave his half-filled wine glass another contemplative whirl, their image reflected in the body length mirror that he had placed in his private quarters in Hueco Mundo.

He so loved the irony.

"You know I am no longer a captain, Gin."

It had been months he'd enjoyed the rare grape vintage and he delicately savored the crimson fluid's heady fumes. Once, this particular variety had evoked the brilliance of autumn's colors. Now, it seemed to have lost some its potency.

"You will think me foolish, Gin."

"Hee-hee, probably."

Gin's insolence rolled off Aizen as harmlessly as drops of rain. For if a comment is to provoke anger, it must somehow agitate a weakness.

"I am finding myself somewhat nostalgic and even remorseful," Aizen continued, slowly taking another sip.

"Oooh?" Gin casually sat himself down on the armrest the opposite of which Aizen reclined over. "Why's that cap'n?"

"It's the end of an era."

"Well, ya', just like you wanted it." Gin prodded, meditatively scratching his chin as he lazily examined the benevolent and unknowable tyrant. In all his years as partner and attack dog to the older death god, he'd never seen Aizen so…forthcoming. Sure, he was an amiable guy, that wasn't even an act, but unless he was giving instructions, he never actually _said_ anything when he spoke.

"I had such hopes for Seretei, once." Aizen's glass hung forgotten in his calloused fingers while Gin had fallen silent, each mirror image measuring the flesh and blood of the other man.

The smile in Gin's reflection did not grow wider; instead it became longer and far sharper. Fitting, Aizen thought, for the wielder of Shinsou.

"They failed us." Aizen concluded after a heavy silence. "Yamamoto Genryuusai for allowing himself to become complacent and lazy, for simply allowing his world view to conveniently smother anything and anyone that opposed him."

Aizen's image in the mirror swirled its glass once again, but did not drink from it.

"Central 46 for being a bunch of doddering old fools, drunk on power that isn't theirs and greedy for such trivial things mere titles and wealth."

Gin held silent, waiting as this one and only aberration in God's perfect mask allowed him to very briefly glimpse into the lightless abyss of Aizen Sousuke.

Go on, Gin thought with an inner laugh, and tell us how you really think.

"But mostly, he failed…" Aizen pauses and something unknowable stirs in the usually reflective eyes of the man in the mirror. "Ukitake Jyuushiro came into power with the world at his feet. Yamamoto had taken the necessary evil upon himself and imposed order on the chaos and so also took the hatred of the conquered. He was given intellect and the potential to surpass Yamamoto in power."

Gin just sits and smiles as Aizen continues on, implacable as any judge.

"And he was given that rarest of gifts: the ability to draw others to himself, to make them want to follow him." Was that envy of all things?

The wine swirls around again, almost, but not quite slipping from loose fingers.

"He could have done it," Aizen declares to no one, but himself in a voice that grows softer with passing each word. "He was Yamamoto's heir and he had the three worlds at his feet…"

The glass stops.

"He should have done this."

Aizen tossed back the drink, the remains of the bloody liquid disappearing behind his lips in one mouthful before he swept upward from his seat and passed through the hallways of Hueco Mundo for the final time.

"And now they will pay a far greater price."

Gin falls into step behind his captain and king, amused by what his old colleagues might have thought if they could have known the black key that jingled so happily in Aizen's pocket was merely the beginning.

Why, he thought, they just might laugh as much as was.


	5. Five

**Times He Could Have Loved**

**1. **

Jyuushiro will admit, though grudgingly, that he is nosey busybody. He will then politely, but pointedly argue that apathy and indifference have caused far more suffering than purposeful malice ever did. This is probably true and no one is going to say that his active concern hasn't helped more than hurt.

But he's still a nosy busybody.

So, when as a student he trips over a broken and bleeding common whore while stumbling drunkenly through the streets (around 3 o'clock in the morning, he thinks) after Shunsui had dragged him out and somehow spiked his drinks (for how else would he be in a red light district?), he does the only thing a drunken busybody could do: he slings her over his frail shoulders and carries her back to the academy, happily whistling a tune.

Her flower name is Natsumi and she has known no other.

He's surprised that she is less than thrilled to wake up to his concerned face, her injuries miraculously healed. His selfless offers of improving her life (for what else should we expect naive do-gooders to offer?) are not met with tears of gratitude.

She wishes to go back out.

He wishes she wouldn't.

Unohana Retsu has never looked more shocked.

Or Kyoraku Shunsui so proud. He cried a little that day: clearly, his days as _Hentai Sempai! _are over.

_He will resist all Shunsui's efforts to get him drunk and will politely step over quite a few sleeping beggars, one of which might have been women. It's hard to tell at night._

**2.**

When Shiba Kaien dies, Shiba Kukaku received two visitations from dead men. The first comes to her that night in the form of her brother, who sits and stares at her with dead, rotting eyes.

The second comes when she is startled awake from her nightmare on a chill sunrise by a servant saying Ukitake had arrived and, would she be like to speak with him, as he had something very important to discuss?

She opens the door, receives the news she already somehow knew and helplessly accepts as he breaks down and weeps his apologies for losing both her brother and sister-in-law in one night.

She wishes to hate him, to beat him and his false love of her brother and pain of his death into the ground. It was impossible that the one responsible for her brother's death could grieve for him as much as she does. But, since she can't kill him, she consoles him and offers meaningless platitudes about what her brother would think and how he spouted endless praise for the murderer in front of her.

He leaves and she forgets. They attend the funeral on opposite sides, before she returns home to drown her pain in the numb comfort of alcohol. It works. More and more each day she forgets, but he remembers and when he hears about her tragic fall from the noble's gossips, he goes to her.

Fate and innumerable decisions bound them together, though neither wishes it; Kukaku seeking solace in her anger that burns away her grief, and Jyuushiro seeking comfort from guilt in allowing himself to be seared by her hate. Either could have consumed the other.

But time can gentle all wounds if the heart can survive and there are few in Soul Society with greater hearts than Shiba Kukaku and Ukitake Jyuushiro.

One day, she realizes this man is the hero of her brother and her own savior.

One day, he realizes that this woman has helped him forgive himself and is wiser than him by far.

_Rukia will stumble past him the hallway, slain by her own grief. The dead cannot give to the dead and there is no one living remaining. In the face of her helpless suffering, his duty will revive him and he will face Kukaku Shiba broken, but alive; his strength reborn in the act of comforting Rukia._

**3. **

Jyuushiro loves teaching. Really. He loves learning, too, but teaching enthralls his attentions far more because he remembers how many had to help him and he enjoys the reciprocation. So when he receives the unusual invitation to be a guest lecturer at the Academy for the Applied Kido course, he happily leaps at the chance.

The first time he sees Momo Hinamori, it's as a white hair bun sticking over the shoulder of some tall, pineapple haired redhead when he's conducting roll call.

The second time is just before she sets his hair on fire.

"That was AMAZING!" Jyuushiro happily cries as he easily douses his singed ponytail. Amidst the resulting sweat-drops and face-faults, Momo is easily spotted, having become a shade whiter than Jyuushiro's own hair.

The class that followed was considered by most to be one of the most enjoyable of the semester, as Jyuushiro excitedly told Momo that, while her spell cast had been flawed due to the improper application of ley line theory, her idea of combining severing void and fire kido to create a vacuum induced hyperbaric explosion was sheer mad brilliance and, why don't they all brainstorm about it?

Two years later, he is delightedly surprised when a nervous, but excited Momo Hinamori asks to join his division.

Eight years later, he realizes he has gone almost a decade without wishing for the bitter rest of death. Ten years, and she discovers that she no longer needs to prove herself. Three decades more pass and together, they find that they spend most of their time talking, laughing, arguing-_living_-together.

After four decades they decide they might as well marry so they can do it all more conveniently.

Neither has stopped learning from the other since.

_Though he will wish to accept, his illness will prevent him from accepting and another man will see the potential need in Hinamori and decide that he will deepen her need instead of filling it._

**4. **

Though they are poor, the Ukitake family grounds are home to an ancient shrine dedicated to the renewal of spring. The shrine, which is maintained by the family and a cabal of priests for use by the public with the help of offerings, is the pride of the Ukitake line and, aside from the beautiful land, the only treasure of the Ugendo estate.

In the end, it is also their undoing as an independent family.

Because of the peasant's interest in the shrine, the Kuchiki take interest, which naturally draws the Shihoin. Their campaign of subterfuge leaves the Ukitake mired in debt and the name tainted by whispered accusations. When both lord and lady are killed in a tragic accident, Jyuushiro is faced with saving his pride or saving his siblings. With bitter reservations, he chooses the latter and spends his endless years as a bureaucrat within the Shihoin system, his potential undiscovered.

Until one day…

"My lady," he greets her with his deepest bow and a quiet, but reassured voice. He is prepared for cold formality or scorn, but what he gets is not what is prepared for.

"You know, I really hate people with hair prettier than mine." His expression, she will later assure him, was absolutely hilarious. "I've got a proposal for you."

Jyuushiro nods carefully, taking a moment to appear to deliberate when there is nothing to consider at all. He sees her amused smirk and the implied threat in the merry light of her feral eyes and he again yields everything he has and loves to the Shihoin.

He becomes her adviser and five years later her father is dead. Twenty five years and the Shihoin have conquered Seretei, and by extension, Soul Society, without a single open battle.

She again surprises him with a proposal, this time one of marriage. Again he yields, bitter, but paradoxically unbeaten and loyal dog that he is. The fate of his family is still in her delicate, but infinitely stronger, bloodstained hands.

Time passes and fortunes rise and fall. Eventually, Yoruichi must experience her own tragedies. Her fire cools and heart softens with age even as he slowly learns to see her as woman first, unknowable goddess and benign dictator second.

And, though neither will name it, perhaps the unnameable thing that they see when they look at one another as they lay awake really is love.

_Jyuushiro's best efforts may have failed, but a family is more than one person. Jyuushiro's younger brother Ukitake Yuudai will suggest the family ignore the nobles and appeal to the peasants and priests. It works. When the two noble families come for the shrine, they are confronted with the threat of angry mobs and back down, neither willing to pay in blood so long as the prize is denied to their rivals._

** 5.**

Byakuya is his friend.

He'll admit that sometimes, he pities Byakuya – just a little. There are so many things that Byakuya doesn't see, that Byakuya cannot allow himself to see…

Sometimes, he doubts Byakuya too, because he acknowledges that other people can at times be only what we see in them. Sometimes, he doubts that the Byakuya that he invents truly exists; sometimes, he thinks he reads too much in Byakuya's silences, that he sees more shadows in Byakuya's eyes than there ever are, and that he hears more in Byakuya's music than Byakuya himself does.

It is when he meets her that Ukitake knows that he's been right all along. That Byakuya is all the potential he's noticed, and a bit more.

Hisana is small and frail, and many concessions need to be made to call her beautiful. There is no unnatural fascination here. She should fascinate Byakuya.

With all the grace of a falling leaf, she yields to the storm.

Nothing that is not falling is complete.

Hisana chooses to fall.

So does he.

Ukitake is the only one who knows how hard it is to sit through all of the ceremony. Byakuya expects it – it's just that Ukitake knows that it is hard.

So, he can comfort Hisana when it all gets too much. When their condescending smiles and jeers get too heavy to lift. When it simply takes that much effort to bear through, when she does not know if she is sufficient, it' s Ukitake who tells her she is right.

That she should love Byakuya, as he does. That she should trust in the fleeting, imaginary shadows, as he does. That she should believe her man is deeper, stronger, better than any of them are.

They are the only ones who do.

The rest of them think Byakuya is a spoiled brat.

Jyuushiro and Hisana do not, and this brings them together. Many cups of tea pass between them, and no words are exchanged. Ukitake looks at what makes Kuchiki Hisana feel insecure, and he thinks she deserves better.

He wishes he had seen this woman first; he did not.

_Though he comforts the young bride as much as he can in a single hour, a single tea ceremony two weeks after the wedding is the only time he will ever get to speak to Kuchiki Hisana in anyway other than passing formality._

_---_

_A/N: The fifth section written entirely by AbstractError, a most valuable beta.  
_


	6. Offer

For the first time in hours, the hidden cavern had fallen still. Its once smooth browns of eons old sandstone were rent and pitted with newly made gashes, here and there charred and melted into malformed glass by intense heat. Near the fringe of the devastation, next to a small but deceptively deep hot spring there were two figures.

Ichigo lay on sparse tatami mat, his lean and newly scarred flesh shielded from exposure to the chill, dry air of the cave by a blanket of dirty, but soft linen that had been placed in respect for his modesty and in thought of his health. Above his head Shihoin Yoruichi sat cross legged, elbows propped up on her knees with her head in her hands, blissfully nude now that her prudish student slumbered in ignorant bliss. Beside her lay a massive archaic shield of wood, her family crest painted in its center. Dryly, she quirked her lips.

The little bastard had done it.

She trusted Kisuke with her life and she'd been there to witness, time and again, Ichigo's abilities, but she still could not help but be amazed.

Bankai.

In less than a week of training.

Mere months after first awakening his powers.

"Holy shit!" didn't even begin to describe it.

Shinigami trained for _centuries_ to obtain what this living impossibility had done in hours. They'd pushed him close to death, as evidenced by the fact that he'd sunk into a deep sleep faster than a rock almost as soon he'd hit the hot spring, but he was recovering fast. Carefully, she performed a quick scan of his reiatsu which burned as a low, but growing furnace against her bare back. Her grin got a little wider before it disappeared as she forgot about the past accomplishments and focused on the tasks in front her. Her grin disappeared as the heavy, warm air of the cave suddenly became cooler and lighter.

"Well isn't this an unexpected pleasure," Yoruichi languidly stood in a single motion, placing one hand on her hip and turning in time to catch the white haori that was thrown at her, "Captain Ukitake."

Ukitake politely dipped his head in return, his calm eyes pointedly fixed beyond her while Yoruichi made a dramatic show out of slowly donning his garment. "Been a while since I had one of these on," she said, sensuously caressing the meticulously cleaned and pressed folds of fabric, purposefully meaning to draw his gaze even as her playful eyes wandered over his thin body, searching to look for weapons under the pretext of flirtations. Though it was difficult to tell when his thin body was so lost under the billowing black robes, she was satisfied. If Yamamoto's elected heir wanted to bring her in, he would not have been so foolish as to come himself.

"One-hundred-ten years and almost eight months to the day," Ukitake replied, his russet eyes easily drifting from hers to hone in on the sleeping boy next to the hot spring.

"What have you done to him?" he asked, voice neutral, but eyes showing concern over the reiatsu irregularities he undoubtedly sensed, but had no way of identifying as those of a hybrid of all worlds.

"We helped him achieve his potential," she answered simply, abandoning her pretext for business. Ukitake did the same.

"Kuchiki Rukia does not deserve death," he said. The omission of Rukia's innocence in her unnamed crime was not missed by Yoruichi.

"No, she does not," Yoruichi agreed.

"Your note said that you had a way to save her," Ukitake stated, eyes betraying ever so slightly the desperate eagerness that his otherwise serene appearance hid. His face had always been a window to those with the knowledge of where to look.

Yoruichi's grin returned and grew larger. "Gave up on Central 46 did you?" Her grin brightened into a feral smile at Ukitake's frown. "Yea, I have a way to save her," she said as she easily lifted up the bulky shield that lay by her feet. "This little heirloom of mine will allow you to destroy the Sokyoku."

Ukitake's calm mask cracked as the implications blurred through his mind. This wasn't a matter of delaying to find proof of innocence and neither would it be a quick escape where he would obligingly turn his eyes. This would be full rebellion.

"No." The answer was instinctive, immediate and heartfelt. "No, there has to be another way."

Yoruichi shook her head slightly in frustration. This was going to be very difficult to do quickly and without revealing too much to her old peer. "There is none. Central has already made up its mind." Crossing her arms over her chest, she took a step forward in challenge. "You, even more than I, have been around long enough to know what that means," she said, her tone level, but authoritative.

Yoruichi had long ago judged the man in front of her, back when the whole insane mess with Kuchiki Rukia had begun. There were only three in Seretei who could stand against Yamamoto and he was the most likely to go along with her plan. She needed him, had needed him three days, or, even better, a hundred and ten years ago. Yoruichi respected the man's skill and his heart, but she no longer had time to wait and see if he would strengthen. If a great tree, weakened from within, could not be made to grow beyond its weakness to bar the enemies from the passage then it would be cut down so that in its fall it would crush the opposition and provide a clear path for the fleeing refugees.

"Yes, another way," Yoruichi softly agreed before asking, "just like there was a way with Urahara, with the vaizard?"

"I had no knowledge of that," he replied.

"But you also knew there was more than what the official story had said, as you do now," she returned, thoroughly unimpressed. "Four captains and four vice captains do not so conveniently die off." Yoruichi stepped forward and grabbed the other captain's robes right at the neck, yanking him down to her level. "I would know. _You _did know, but _I _was the one left to spring them from the mess that your holy order left them sitting in when it refused to acknowledge that a member of the Gotei could get so out of control."

The unnaturally light and cold air became charged with restrained energy that threatened to stand her very hair on end, but Yoruichi unconcernedly released the elder captain moved back away. She held all the cards and she would press her advantage to the full while her time lasted. And, really, she'd waited for this for so, so long. This sickly knight, with his legend and black kimono billowing around him, was one of the greatest symbols of Yamamoto's regime. And it was Shihoin Yoruichi's turn in a long line that had a few good reasons to see that regime humbled.

"I'm going to level with you Jyuushiro, partly because I think you deserve at least that much, and partly because I just don't have time for your usual bullshit." Yoruichi crossed her arms over her ample chest and continued on in an even tone, easily crushing any counter protest under her momentum. "As a Shihoin and as a member of the onmitsukido I've watched you most of my life. And in some dusty old vaults, we have detailed records of the time before that. Ever since your academy days, you've been the old man's faithful son in all, but surname," she paused to take a breath and seemed to gauge the other man before her and his gaunt features as she would another in a duel. "You've been uselessly agonizing for centuries over being the old man's favorite vassal and axe man with your morality often at odds with his…because you believed Yamamoto was doing the best for a world gone to shit." The exiled captain's eyes narrowed and she leaned to one side, drumming her fingers over the borrowed fabric covering her left arm. "I can't fault you for those old choices, hell, in most cases you were right and you stepped up to take what punishment could be given to you, but now you've got a clear cut case."

Yoruichi straightened fully and did her best through lofty posture and absolute lack of self-consciousness to let the old Shihoin princess shine through. Despite the minor nobility of the Ukitake and the faint trace of Kuchiki blood they claimed, Jyuushiro was a commoner in his regard to higher authority.

"So," Yoruichi breathed in a neutral whisper, "you get lucky with a very rare case of black and white. Your innocent subordinate is erased and the ashes swept under a rug or you stand up, stop it, and repay some old friends along the way."

The two stood at pace and observed one another, Yoruichi ignoring the chill and watching his eyes, the edge of his mouth.

A minute later, she smiled, white teeth flashing against cocoa skin.

"You have a plan to deal with Kuchiki, Soifon and Sajin when they doubtlessly try and stop this hair brained scheme by either attacking me or my subordinates," he said, waiting for to elaborate, his pale mask hiding nothing from her.

Yoruichi laughed and knew she'd won, just as she always did.


	7. Sublimation

Jyuushiro was just over six centuries old when he entered what he would later once dub with uncharacteristic poeticism "the gray mist." To Yamamoto's great political victory, both Jyuushiro and Shunsui had finished the newly born academy and had spearheaded the effort to finally cement the once tenuous regime and drive back the bulk of the hollow population from the human world. But despite his triumph, Jyuushiro was discontent. Food that he had once relished lost its flavor, his attention and energy flitted from thing to thing and anxiety slowly corroded the iron clad serenity he'd built around himself.

By this time, his shoulders were beginning to slump with the enormity of what he had done and what was expected of him, by the choices he had been forced to make and their inevitable and unpredictable consequences on both him and the innocent masses. He was also fighting the long evaded realization that he had reached his physical limits. Though chances were decent his power and the expertise of the nascent 4th would keep him alive for an unknown amount of time, it had become painfully clear that his potential as a fighter, and by extension his potential to surpass all others and someday take up the mantel of the Captain-Commander, were forever lost to the disease. His once breathtaking flight, a thing of wondrous pride for a sickly child who feared his own uselessness, had been cut short before it could truly begin. Jyuushiro would forever be: _almost_. His illusion as the miracle warrior was over. He would have to find another role within which to fit himself.

As Yamamoto's reign brought a period of relative stillness unknown in any memory, living or written, Jyuushiro tried to reconnect with his family. After the death of his father and mother, Jyuushiro had filled both roles for his siblings. On his return after centuries of letters and visits restricted to his all too brief respites from war, he found his family had grown beyond him as their parent. They had their own lives, own families, own wisdom and while the clan continued to meet and would always share unusually close bonds, it was clear this was not something that could fill the slowly growing hollow in his heart. Shunsui became increasingly worried as he pretended not to hear quiet mutterings about the impossibility of ever finding a wife.

His rescue came in the form of a child, Shinamori Sara, born 2.3 kilos as the third daughter in Jyuushiro's six-hundred and fiftieth year to the youngest of Ukitake, the then Shinamori Kazumi. Jyuushiro arrived along with the rest of the Ukitake family circus two years after Sara had been born and thus christened. While he laughed and chatted with his siblings, his happiness at the reunion marred by the heightening barriers of diverged experiences and his position as a heroic symbol and surrogate parent, he found himself unexpectedly staring down at the newly mobile toddler. Unnoticed amidst the ruckus, the two quietly examined one another. Apparently finding whatever it had been that she had been seeking, Sara stumbled against his legs and lifted her stubby arms up in clear demand. Jyuushiro obliged her and spent the next several minutes wincing as Sara exercised her fascination with his unusual hair by alternatively tugging and eating it. She fell asleep under his captivated gaze while Jyuushiro sat and pondered the gift that had literally fallen into his lap.

With the end of the unification wars and a lack of any significant resistance to the newly united and trained shinigami, Ukitake was left with only his paperwork and a surplus of free time. Gratefully submitting to desperation and natural instincts, he spent most of his free time lavishing his attention on Sara. Kazumi was a caring, but extremely fanciful mother who left most of the practicalities of raising Sara to the maids and Jyuushiro while she indulged in day dreams and traveling with her husband, an extremely successful businessman in rice. Sara's childhood was spent in endless expeditions through the family gardens, eating candy and dancing circles around her breathless uncle who worshipped the ground she barely seemed to touch and wrote her stories when she complained the books she had were boring.

Under Jyuushiro's showers of affection and the diligence of the family servants, Sara grew into a properly refined young lady who managed to lovingly and selfishly terrify Jyuushiro out of his wits and cajole him into publishing the stories he wrote down for her. As her intellect and manners matured and blossomed, Jyuushiro found in her an equal of sorts who could both challenge him with her naively penetrating questions and give him a chance to safely exercise his capacity for passionate love that he had cultivated as a young man then carefully suffocated as he grew into a captain and his siblings into men and women. Over the years of her growth, all the affection he might have once given out over the course of a lifetime to his parents, his own children and a wife that had found themselves cut so short were sublimated into a sort of ineffable glow that he set like a halo over Sara.

And as the years melted away and he learned as it seemed for the first time the many joys and pains of losing a child to gain an equal, Jyuushiro finally found the strength to hold his love and his goals both loosely enough that he could let go and tight enough that they would still be his. This was to serve him well as the devastation of the Winter War loomed unknowably closer and he would again see everything he'd invested in torn into so much ash while he inexplicably survived.

_A/N: Pointless WAFF and history filler that lacks any sort of punch or point? Definitely. But I had the sudden urge to write something that wasn't an angsty reveal of mostly negative traits of my favorite character and neither did a I feel like a parody. I asked the muse to throw me a bone, but she blew me off. If you want to see what this would look like done right, go check out Les Miserables from your local library or Google search. Whatever, itch is scratched, box checked, moving along now..._


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